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Learn: Home » Matching Car Speakers to Your Mobile A/V System
Let's face it — despite manufacturers' best attempts, car speakers are not cool, flashy products. They don't come with multicolor displays or fold-down faceplates, and they do not offer you the satisfaction of pushing a button to make something happen. In fact, in most applications, car speakers are not even visible, but hidden away behind factory grilles. But car speakers are perhaps the single most crucial element of your mobile A/V system. For no matter how sophisticated the electronics in your setup, it's your speakers that determine how your music sounds.
Difficult decisions
If you think it's hard trying to decide which in-dash receiver to buy, try shopping for car speakers!
 This spread from the Summer 2003 Crutchfield catalog shows 20 different 6"x9" speakers. |
A typical full-size Crutchfield catalog lists about 120 different car head units, and about 150 different car speakers (including components and separates; excluding subs). Once you determine what size speaker will fit in your factory speaker openings, you've still got to choose from 10 - 30 speakers in any given size category.
Plus, the relative lack of specialty features makes car speakers all that much more difficult to distinguish from one another. Aside from adding more drivers (2-, 3-, 4-, or 5-way?) or including an external crossover, car speakers are all designed in largely the same way.
As Richard Clark has noted in Car Audio & Electronics, "Every [speaker] manufacturer has access to pretty much the same materials, and until some company starts using 'unobtanium' to build speakers, this is not going to change." 1
1 Richard Clark, "Speaking Out On Speakers,"
Car Audio & Electronics, September/October 2000
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